WG Sebald is my moon goddess.

After readingThe
Rings of Saturn, I decided I hadn’t had enough of Sebald’s unsettling,
melancholy mix of essay and fiction (I was apparently the only person in my
class to feel this way, but wevs those guys are stoopid), so I orderedThe Emigrants, which I
received today, and am so excited to get into. First though, I have to attempt
Claude Levi-Strauss’sTristes
Tropiques, for all the wrong reasons, apparently, because the whole first
chapter is about how people who entertain a fascination with adventure (“one of
those unavoidable drawbacks” of being an anthropologist) are ridiculous. He
makes a good point actually, which I’m not going to try to reproduce because
I’m an unfair person, and also because I’m reading Bill Bryson’sA Walk in the Woods, which is
about…an adventure. Specifically, walking the Appalachian Trail. It’s full of
just the kind of meaningless anecdotes and hackneyed information Levi-Strauss
would have disapproved of. Especially to my liking is that it contains the
usual Brysonian level of obsession with plants and animals that can kill you
(see:In a Sunburned Country).
I love that.